Thursday, June 14, 2012

Thursday Roundup

Favorites and duds from Thursday's commenting.

Favorites, in no particular order:Steve U had it going today. First this, in the Jetpack Fan post, then this (which is hilarious) in the Beacher's Madhouse post, and finally this, in the 38 Studios post. Two wordplay-plus-dialogue jokes and a terrific one-liner. Nice work.

I thought this was one of the day's best jokes, from Orange and Palindromic in the Dave Winfield post. I'm surprised it didn't get a little more attention. It's one of those excellent hiding-in-plain-sight jokes that always make me shake my head.

Here's a damn funny quote from RMJ=H in the 38 Studios post. It's just a silly and out-of-left-field use of the word "frozen", and it works.

And finally, this awesome dig at Curt Shilling from BronzeHammer in the 38 Studios post was good for a chuckle. There's a certain callback quality to this kind of joke, where anyone reading it understands that everything in the set-up takes place before the comma. It's such a familiar structure for Deadspin readers, but that's not necessarily a negative. After all, expectation is half of every joke - with this kind of set-up, it's not just the content of the joke that creates expectation, but the actual structure itself.Total Fucking Duds

There were an awful lot of bad comments today, most, as you'd expect, coming from the unstarred pack. Tonight I elected to eschew the unstarred duds and focus on two crappy comments from featured guys. Sorry, fellas.

You may remember that fat-leaveher has long been something of a guilty pleasure for MBA. His jokes aren't always sophisticated or even especially clever, but from time to time he strikes a specific tone that is uniquely his and actually pretty damn funny. I don't mind saying he hasn't seemed to have his best stuff lately. This comment, in the Jetpack Fan post, seems like a fairly desperate grab at a mostly wrung-out meme. The structure is brutal and the punchline is uncertain and, anyway, I'm not sure forcing another mostly-random fetish into the Rex Ryan mythology is ever really going to get a laugh. Featured guys shouldn't ever settle for that kind of thing.

Similarly, here's a brutally bad effort from Madoffs Mets in the Littering Sanders post. Another mostly-dead meme being used in a totally uninspired manner for a joke that definitely should have been left on the cutting room floor. When you go back to one of these memes, I think it's a good idea to remind yourself that most people, once they get a sniff of the meme, are going to groan pretty much right away. That's why you really need something spectacular - you have to overcome that groan, and it's not easy. I doubt even Madoffs Mets would argue this particular iteration of the Roethlisberger-the-rapist joke is anything like spectacular.